March 11, 2010

So Wednesday was pretty much the same as the day before the only exciting thing was we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was very beautiful and very dead. I enjoyed seeing everything dead and barron, it was sort of a different type of beauty. There was also a sculpture installation in the garden a guy made of his version of metal trees.

Today we had our English classes and of course I slept through my alarm so I had ten minutes to get ready and run out of the door. After class I stayed at school to use the internet so I could work on some homework and Skype my family. It's amazing how much of our life revolves around the need for internet, I would probably be alright at home without it, but out here by myself I feel like I need to have it.

After I left School I stopped by the grocery story to stock up on some food. I grabbed a bag of pasta, tomato sauce, some eggs, butter, a bag a small lemon bread cakes for breakfast and a can of lentil soup with chorizo to try out. I stopped at the bakery to grab a loaf of bread and was able to order it and pay for it all in Spanish, and apparently no one knew I was American until some of the other kids stopped by and started talking to me in English, then everyone in the bakery turned and looked at me. It made me feel great – I am starting to blend in. The bakery is one of our favorite food places; we go almost every day because you can buy a big baguette for one euro. So in movies when people come home with a baguette sticking out of their grocery bags and you think how fake that is – I am one of them now!

So I came home around 7 and worked on some homework. Later that night me and two of the other girls were talking and one of them really wanted to go grab some food. So we left around nine thirty and headed out to a small cafeteria for some dinner and drinks. We had a great time and I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat and just had a coke because I haven't had any soda since I got here. We got home around eleven thirty and hung out with some of the other people who were at our apartment.

More Class

Today was pretty much the same as yesterday. There is some new teacher drama. Apparently our two teachers hate each other so one of them is constantly criticizing the other one to the students. Then the students get involved and its get blown way out of proportion. As long as it isn't going to affect me I think it's pretty amusing.

Here's a random picture of our amazingly tiny elevator. Four of us can hardly hit in there with our bags.

Class today was pretty much the same as always, we signed up for some extra programs if we wanted to go. So being a McMilon, I signed up for everything. They all sound really different and exciting; like going to visit a ranch where they raise bulls for bull fighting or taking a tour of the Real Madrid stadium. Who could turn all of that down?

Two girls in our program wanted to do a home stay and they got put together with a woman who is a professional chef. In the program they are provided with breakfast and a dinner, both are minor meals because lunch is the most important meal in Spain. For breakfast she has the girls split a sleeve of crackers and for dinner they get salad. When the AIFS people found out about the food they were disappointed but when they found out that the girls are not only required to share a room but they are required to share a bed, and they do not have a door to their bedroom they were upset. So now they get to move in with a new family.

First Day of Classes

Woke up this morning by the window banging open from the huge wind outside. So after I got ready I head to school for my class at nine. During class it was discovered that the projector was not working so we sat there for an hour and a half while they tried to get it to work. I brought my laptop so I could finally get some internet and skyped with my mom for a while, in the middle of the class room (with no sound of course). Then after writing some emails some other internet activities I took off back home for lunch.

This is a picture of the street I walk up to get to school, the red brick building on the right hand side is the building. The brown door in the corner is the door I go in.

While I was there a woman came in, I think it was the land lady, and she did not speak one word of English. So I told her I knew very very little Spanish and we went from there. She walked me around our flat and explained that there is a cleaning woman who cleans the school who will also clean the flats. She will empty the trash on Monday and come on Thursday to clean. She only cleans the common rooms and not the bedrooms. She also said that we should be very quiet and not have any extra guests spending the night. I understood all of that. Can you believe it! I don't even speak Spanish but if this is how much I have learned in a few days by the time I get home I should have it down.

This picture is my walking home from school. It reminds me very much of the business district in downtown LA. That is the metro stop for school.

Another fun thing is that most Spanish people in Madrid are pretty pale, especially in the winter, so I totally blend in. They realize I'm American if they hear me speaking English, which is pretty cool for me. It's pretty much the biggest accomplishment of mine so far.

Later in the day I went back to school to send out some emails and I had a chance to Skype with my parents. That was really cool and I felt a lot better to have a chance to see their faces. After coming home a bunch of us went out to celebrate one of the girls twenty first birthday. She really wanted to go to the Hard Rock Café so we took the metro to another part of the city. It was really fun and she had a great time which is all that mattered. The surprising thing is that they basically took the prices from their American menu and put a euro sign at the end of them. So one mixed drink cost around 14 Euros or close to twenty dollars. It was crazy!

It was freezing on the way home but Madrid is beautiful at night.

The Palace and the Prado

Today I woke up around eight and had a chance to talk to my parents and Katie which was really great, but every time I hear their voice I get so homesick. I got over that and after I took a shower I worked on some school work, turns out this is supposed to be an academic trip, who knew? So the rest of the girls got up and got ready and we set out for the school at eleven, which was cutting it extremely close considering we had to be there at 1115. We jumped on the metro and got there no problem.

After we all showed up we got on the tour bus AIFS had rented, along with a guide, to show us some sights. First we passed a square with a giant statue of Cortez, surrounding the statue are more statues of his characters like Don Quixote. They also planted a bunch of olive trees around the square because those are the native trees of Sevilla.

Then we arrived at the Royal Palace. Here we got out and unfortunately I had to leave my camera on the bus because there were no pictures aloud in the palace. I was very sad because then I didn't get to take any pictures of the outside either, but I'm going back because it's amazing. The courtyard to get in is massive, and all grey stone like a granite in big square stones. They also have a place that overlooks the gardens but it turns out that there is actually winter here and all the trees turn brown, so we couldn't really see much, plus it's been so cloudy that everything looks dull and grey.

So when we finally got in to the palace we split up into two groups so we could hear our guides more easily. It turns out Madrid has only been the capital of Spain for the past few hundred years, before that it was always Toledo. The first palace that was built in Madrid was made entirely out of wood and eventually burned down. They then had a new palace built out of stone in the same location.

First we walked up this giant grand marble stair case. Each step is a long single sheet of marble from Toledo, and you can see the little hooks where they attach the carpet for the royal events. On the ceiling over the staircase they have amazing frescos, pretty much all over the entire palace. There are also a few statues of previous Spanish kings. Our guide told us it's easy to remember Spanish kings because they are either named Philip or Charles. So one family line have very long faces, while the other line has extremely large noses – just like Princess Sofia.

From there we went into the throne room. The palace is considered a working palace, though the royal family does not live there, because state dinners and such are always held there. When the palace was first built they had three factories just for the palace: one for the tapestries and rugs, one for all of the bronze and metal fixtures, and one just for the chandeliers – they are huge! It turns out this is the only palace in the world that has not been affected by any political turmoil or revolutions like some of the others such as Versailles. During the Spanish civil war the palace already belonged to the state so the revolutionaries never had a reason to damage it. On the walls of the throne room are velvet tapestries with silver designs sewn along the edges, so when they have to replace it they have to cut the silver off and attach it to the new velvet.

In the throne room, and every other room in the palace, all the furniture and fixtures are the same they are never updated so everything is super old. The thrones are surrounded by four gold lions that were res cued from the old palace where they used to be table legs. The thrones are still in the room but are not used because the King and Queen prefer to stand among the other people in the room.

We also went into a room called the porcelain room which is covered in white wood panels with porcelain decorations screwed onto the panels (the screws are very visible).

The dining room features a giant, long table which has to be set by walking across the middle. There are also two very large courtyards in the middle of the palace. There is also a smoking room decorated in the oriental fashion of course. I had no idea but apparently that's how it should be done; keep that in mind for all of your smoking rooms.

From there we had a forty five minute lunch break where we went to a little café for sandwiches. After that we went to the Prado, a classical art museum. Here we saw some paintings by El Greco, Goya, and Velazquez. There are some other great paintings there that I didn't get a chance to see so I am going back soon to see the rest.

After the museum a few of us took the metro back to the apartment so we could relax and look at homework before our big dinner at eight. For dinner AIFS took us all out to a small restaurant across the street from the school where they served small plates of everything on the menu. We had a tuna and potato cold salad, pickled seafood and radishes, green salad with tuna, mushrooms in a red sauce, Chorizo, Tortilla, and an ice cream for dessert.

After dinner we ran to the metro to avoid the worst of the rain and were happy to discover that after the elevator being broken all weekend it was finally working again.

The First Three Days

Ok, so I finally made it and I'm settled in (for the most part). It has been a very interesting and long trip so far. It's coming to the end of the third day and it barely feels like two.

The first day, Thursday, was our flight day. After being too sad to leave my parents and waving goodbye to them at every turn through security, I finally got to my gate. Our flight was supposed to leave at 11am from LAX to Philadelphia and then from there to Madrid, where we would arrive at 10am Madrid time. Cool, no problem. Then at 1130 they let us all know that the flight has been cancelled due to broken toilets. So we waited our turn to see about a new flight and when they realized there were 32 of us all together the guy was going crazy. So, he finds us a flight through other airlines, lufthana, which flies out of Tom Bradley terminal in three hours. That's fine and all except now we have to go downstairs, pick up all of our checked luggage and walk from one end of Lax to the other end…a very long walk with my carry on bad and my two big suitcases.

So all thirty of us finally get to the terminal, which by the way is really nice and has all kinds of food and stores, and get in line to check our bags and check into our flight. The first girl gets to the counter and the computer does not see us, and of course the US airways guy didn't give us tickets just told us to run down there and he would put us in the system, uh-huh. So while they are working on figuring out the problem we all had to drag our suite cases to the side and wait. So we waited, and waited, for two hours. Then my literature teacher (one of the two faculty people escorting us) decides that because he is already checked in he is just going to go ahead and board and we can just wait with our history teacher. He takes off and we all found out in the first day that if there is ever a problem like that he looks out for himself.

However, there was a lot to see during the two hours of standing time. There are three people in our group who are vegetarian; my history teacher, who we didn't even know was until we ate lunch together and she chose a vegetarian restaurant instead of the museo de jamon (museum of ham – my kind of place), the girl in my apartment who told us she was when we all went grocery shopping, and finally my favorite, the girlfriend of the guitar player. She has made speeches in class about how much of a vegetarian she is, because of this I know to always watch and listen to her because she is just so entertaining. This same girl was waiting near me in the terminal when she noticed a hard core airport security guy. He was just a normal middle aged cop in full riot gear and a giant machine gun. She starts freaking out and asking if that made anyone else uncomfortable because she just can't believe that they have had to stoop to that level. Come on, I wanted to tell her the stories I've heard from my uncle, the sniper at the prison.

Another interesting activity was watching the suitcase shenanigans. It turns out that on US Airways the baggage limit is 50 pounds and if you go over the weight it is a small fee, but on Lufthansa the overage fee is 150 dollars. Big difference. Luckily I really paid attention to weight when I was packing my teddy bear and chocolate frosting, only the bare essentials is my motto. Then I got to watch everyone panic for about an hour about the weight limit, and then it was a rush to unpack and repack everything to a better weight. One guy was my favorite, he unpacked three jackets and one suit jacket to layer and wear onto the plane to save space.

So we finally get checked in, now it's a rush because they are holding the airplane that was boarding as we checked in. They gave us fast passes for security, which was a first for me but not really that exciting. We had to go through security for the second time that day, and not only do you have to take out you laptop but also any other large electronics so I had to dig out my camera and my eReader as well, and then walk very quickly from one end of the terminal to the farthest gate and get on the plane.

I found my seat which was of course the middle seat between some old German dude and a middle aged guy. Taking off was really fun because everything was in German, I get wanting to use all of the German phrases I learned from playing Wolfenstein but I would then have to shoot somebody. We were in the second to the front row of the economy class so we had a tiny little TV to watch the movies. But it was very exciting when about an hour into the flight they rolled out the food, either chicken and rice or pasta, plus salad and a weird little cake soaked in espresso. And they gave us crazy metal silverware, the fork looked like a taco bell spork, I wanted to steal them for Katie but I did not want to upset the Germans.

So it turned out that the guy next to me, not the old German, works in Hollywood training actors to do stunts…very bizarre. He was flying to Germany to teach this troop of German water entertainers at a water theme park. Weird. So I fell asleep which was great until this awful turbulence woke me up, the guy was by the restrooms and he came running back to fasten his seatbelt, which terrified me. Waking up in the middle of all that made me get so sick, but thankfully I didn't throw up. But after ten minutes we passed through the area and everything went back to normal, except that we were watching a Jane Goodall documentary where all the gorillas are named Frodo and Gandalf.

Then at what I guess was morning they served an egg and potato number, fruit and yogurt. Oh, and by the way, they walked up the aisles the entire flight with beer, wine, cognac, and baileys – there was no alcohol for sale except for the duty free bottles.

We finally landed at about 11 in the morning in Frankfurt. Because our flight was delayed we had to again rush through the airport to our next flight to Madrid. This time we had to go through customs, so my stamp is from Frankfurt, and go up two floors to the next security. Unfortunately I beeped when I went through the metal detectors so I got felt up by the tallest German woman with such a strong tan that she looked like a purse, it was ok until she ran her fingers around the inside of my jeans waistband – uncomfortable. Then we finally made it to our gate where me and a couple other people did not have boarding passes so as soon as were checked in and given our passes we had to get on the plane. As soon as I got on the plane I passed out.

When we landed in Madrid I realized not only had my ears not popped, but they hadn't popped since we landed in Frankfurt. So already miserable with a horrible cold I now could not hear anything. We went down stairs, no customs to go through, and waited forever to get our luggage, two girls lost one of their pieces each so not too bad. We came out and met our three AIFS coordinators, Karen (a grown up version of Harry Potter), Shawn (really sweet and the best Spanish speaker but man she's got a messed up grill), and Tori (the head AIFS girl who is stationed out of London).

After everyone caught up we had to walk through the cold and rain to the bus they had hired to take us to our apartment. The bus was really nice, and a comfortable change from the planes. When we finally got to downtown Madrid it was really pouring rain outside, and it turned out that the street our apartment was on was too narrow for the bus to drive down. So we had to get out on the main street, get our entire luggage together, and hike three blocks in the rain to our apartment.

When we got to our apartment we could barely all fit into the lobby. Each apartment is staggered on half floors, so on apartment was down one half and one was up one half. But we are on the six floor and the elevator is about two feet by four feet wide. So we had to send one girl up to the top floor while we filled the elevator with suitcases, we pushed the button and waited a couple of minutes and it turns out that nothing happened. So we moved one out and put one girl in. So when she came back down we loaded it up again. Meanwhile, Tori took the home stay kids to their families and my instructors to their apartments, and Shawn took the four boys to their apartment which is about a fifteen minute walk away from ours. So Karen got stuck with all the girls. He let the rest of us girls go up to our apartment and he would load the rest of our bags. So I had to walk up six flights of stairs (112 steps), totally jet lagged and not having good sleep in about 48 hours. I almost died.

So we got to our apartment and Karen told us he would come collect us in about an hour so we could settle in a little. I unpacked and tried like crazy to get over my insane homesickness and loneliness. Then Karen showed up with a pack of toilet paper for us because he noticed we didn't have any and we all went downstairs. We met up with the rest of the girls and we went for a little tour of the essentials in our neighborhood, in the pouring rain. It was good to know, but wow, it was freezing. We then walked to the school so he could show us how to get there and so we could use the computers to email home before the school closed.

By the time we got out it was about seven and Karen and Shawn asked if we wanted to go grab some food. So a few of us walked down the street a few blocks until we reached a small square. Here they had a McDonalds, a Burger King and a VIPS. Vips is a Spanish food chain, kinda like a higher end Dennys. I had a Jamon y Queso sandwich with fries; everyone else had pretty basic American food. From there we walked back to our apartment. We were walking down our street and stopped at our apartment and the key would not work. So one of the girls who were with us started ringing the buzzers to our apartments, finally some angry looking guy came out and opened the door for us and went outside. We didn't know what his problem was and we were tired so when we tried to get into the elevator and found it was facing the side and not straight to the door we were slightly confused. Then I realized we were in the completely wrong building and we quickly left. We finally found the right building, squeezed into the elevator and went straight to bed at about ten o'clock.

So this morning I woke up at 730 to take a shower, out of seven girls I am the only one who likes to take showers in the morning – what up wit dat? So we got ready to walk and meet everyone outside the school for our orientation and a small walking tour. We all rolled out of the apartment and made it to the school barely in time. They walked us to their sister school and I have no idea where it was because it felt like we went in circles.

There they explained how everything works and how to travel throughout Europe. Then we walked to the internet café where AIFS set up accounts for us, but since it was 1230 they were of course closed. We then walked to the Metro so they could make sure we knew how to get around. We went to the Plaza del Sol and watched a giant protest (they say they have them every weekend but do not want us to participate) and then walked to the Plaza Mayor. From there we split up and went to grab some lunch.

After that we headed back to our neighborhood to go grocery shopping. There are a lot of little tiendas (stores) around our apartment but most of them close early and almost none of them are open on Sunday. We found out that the huge department store a few blocks from our neighborhood, El Cartes Ingles, has everything: clothes, toys, house supplies, cafes, and a huge grocery store. After we grabbed some basics (ham, cheese, bread and crackers for me) we divided up the refrigerator and the cabinets so we were golden. Unfortunately the elevator broke earlier that day so we had to lug all of our groceries up six flights of stairs. Not fun at all.

Then some of the girls went out to look for phones and I stayed here to hang out and write all this stuff down. Finally one of the girls and I walked back to the school at 8 to meet my teacher Doug and a couple of the other kids for dinner. We jumped back on the metro and went to Bilboa which is a trendy square where a lot of the younger kids hang out. We went to a cafeteria built in the 1877 and all had small Spanish dinners. I had a tortilla (a Spanish omelet with cheese and potatoes), some people had a chorizo stew and two others had churros con chocolate.

When we finally got home it was about 1030 and the other girls were in the kitchen eating dinner so we had some bonding with each other and some of the other boys came up and hung out for about an hour. So even though its 130 in the morning we are all still up talking, comparing crazy stories and I am really learning a lot.